Corporate brand building and portfolio management in a South African state-owned organisation

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management: Strategic Marketing Johannesburg, 2017State-owned enterprises share many similarities with their purely commercial counterparts. There are however, a number of factors that these organisations are obligated to account for that set them apart from traditional product and service brands. This makes them unique in terms of how and why they build their corporate brands and manage their brand portfolios. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are prolific across the world. Enterprises controlled and funded entirely or partially by governments are involved in a broad spectrum of business ranging from arms manufacture to communications and media. These state-owned enterprises often command marketing budgets and resource their businesses with brand managers for the purposes of building strong corporate brands and managing their brand portfolios effectively. In short, SOEs often behave as brands and yet their objectives differ from the very definition of what building a brand is intended to do; deliver bottom-line value to the business. The main problem in this study then was to identify the decision-making factors in corporate brand building and portfolio management in a South African state-owned organisation. This was in a bid to resolve how these factors are prioritised to achieve organisational objectives and what value there is in building a corporate brand in such a state-owned organisation. To do this a qualitative research strategy was selected as a means of identifying insights from key personnel at a state-owned organisation. A single case study method was utilised and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was identified as an ideal SOE in which to conduct the study. The key findings indicated a worrying level of confusion regarding the true objectives of the organisation. This was attributed to be due to two factors. Firstly, that there is a conflict between the mandate of an SOE or its altruistic, normative objective to serve the country and its people and the commercial imperative to build consumers (or audiences in the case of the SABC) and attract revenue to be self-sustaining. Secondly, that due to political influence and the nature of state- ownership of the organisation, the objectives documented and approved differ to those that are truly practiced by managers in the organisation. Further to this it was found that there is a lack of clarity regarding the structure of the brand portfolio and relationships between brands, many of which have strong heritage in and of themselves and form key touchpoints for sizeable audiences. It was found that building a strong corporate brand was essential for the SABC’s success and that each brand in the portfolio should fall under the umbrella corporate brand however this again brought forth the conflict between how things should be and how they can practically be done. Due to its SOE nature, and the public context of the SABC, it was found that the portfolio brands tended to distance themselves from the corporate brand due to its instability and negative corporate reputation which impacted on individual brand performances in the portfolio. Based on the findings in this study, this thesis recommends a clear prioritisation of the three areas of influence within the SOE in the order of audiences followed by mandate and then revenue. The thesis recommends a corporate brand audit, taking stock of the heritage elements of the SABC corporate brand and its brand portfolio so as to mine the value in its 80-year-old history and to turn these heritage-based elements into advantages for the organisation upon which its corporate brand can be built. This thesis recommends the building of a strong corporate brand for the SABC with links between each brand in its portfolio leaning to the branded house side of the spectrum of classical brand relationship typology. The study also proposes practical applications to achieve prioritisation of the corporate brand which requires high level management attention. To this end, it calls for the appointment of a Chief Marketing Officer to the executive of the SABC and a core corporate brand management team. The function of this team would be to articulate the objectives and the prioritisation of these objectives to all stakeholder groups, to audit and reorganise the brand portfolio for effective management according to theory-based guidelines, and to establish and implement a corporate brand building strategy that will deliver value to the SABC and all its stakeholders, using the corporate brand and its messaging as a bridge to connect the brand promise of the organisation to the brand reality experienced by those stakeholder groups most especially its audiences as priority.MT 201